Chapter 14

THE CLAIRVOYANT.

If Ruth had but gone carefully through the deserted hovel she would have made yet another discovery. Her instinct had not played her false when she had felt that unfriendly eyes were upon her. For she had been watched, and the watcher now emerged from the house to see her disappear down the road. Much later on she came to know of the spy.

At all events she had found the link--the pale gold oval with the champagne bottle enamelled upon it. It was a strange device, she thought, for a sleeve-link; certainly it was the first of the kind she had seen. And she fancied that the other portions of the links would bear the same design; but in this she was wrong. What she had found proved to her that the assassin had been a gentleman; for no poor creature could have afforded to wear such jewellery. But how to make use of the discovery? How was she to find out to whom the link had belonged, especially now that so many years had passed? The owner might be dead; he might be out of England! There remained the one expedient of asking Mrs. Jenner if she could remember anyone who had worn such links. So this Ruth made up her mind to do as soon as she could see Geoffrey. He might question the unfortunate woman; and through a series of leading questions the truth might be revealed. Meanwhile, feeling that nothing else was to be done for the moment, she went to see Mrs. Garvey. With her powers, she might reveal strange things about the owner of that piece of gold.

The girl had intended to take the brown horse with her; but on going to the drawer in which she had put it she found it empty. Then she remembered that her little nieces had received permission to turn over her silks and laces she questioned them about the missing toy, and Ethel, the eldest, frankly confessed that they had taken it for their brother George.

"I hope you do not mind, Aunt Ruth," the child said, pleadingly; "you said we could take what we liked that wet day, so long as we put the things tidy. We thought George might like the horse, so we gave it to him."

Strange, thought Ruth, that the toy should have passed into the very hands for which it was intended; but she shuddered at the thought of the lad playing with a thing of such ghastly associations! It was her own fault; she had forgotten that it was in that drawer when she had told the children that they might play with her chiffons.

"But I told you, Ethel, to put them back," she said. "Why did you not replace the toy?"

Ethel drew a piteous lip and tears came into her eyes. "Oh, don't be cross, Aunt Ruth, and don't tell mother! You know how angry she will be. We put everything back but the horse, and George would not give it up to us."

"Why could you not take it from him?" her aunt asked, impatiently.

"Because he has hidden it away," sobbed the little girl. "He won't say where it is."

So, after pacifying the child, Ruth went off in search of George. She came upon that young gentleman on the terrace playing with a cart. Naturally, she looked for the horse which should have been drawing the vehicle, but no horse was to be seen. "Where is your gee-gee?" coaxed Aunt Ruth.

"Gone to grass," lisped George, who was precocious beyond telling.

"You bring him back from grass, Georgie, and give him to Aunt Ruth."

But this he positively refused to do. The animal was hidden away, and all she could say or do failed to compel its production. "Dobbin is ill; he is in the paddock," was all that he would say. And from this position she failed to move him.

Ultimately she had to go without it. She made George promise to bring it from the paddock next day, and relying on this slender chance of recovering a toy which should never have fallen into his hands, Ruth went her way, hoping to learn something from Mrs. Garvey about the broken link.

Mrs. Garvey was a thin, pale woman, who practised the calling of a clairvoyant, in opposition to her husband's wishes.

"My dear!" cried the lady, receiving Ruth with great effusion. "I am glad to see you. But this is not unexpected; for it was borne in upon me, by some telepathic communication, that you were in trouble, and would come to me for assistance. Well. I am quite ready to give it to you."

"Do you know----" Ruth began, somewhat I puzzled by this exordium.

"I know nothing--nor do I wish to know. The spiritual insight I possess will reveal to me what is for your good. Come into my temple, and I will see what is to be done."

The room which was dignified by the name of temple was a small bare apartment thickly carpeted, the windows being darkened by green blinds. For quite three minutes there was a dead silence. Then Mrs. Garvey spoke. "Murder," she said, in a low emotional voice. "This piece of gold has to do with a crime. I see a bare room--a child with a knife in his hand--a dead man at the child's feet. There is hate in my heart--not of the child; but of the dead. I am in the darkness--in mist--in rain--the dead man is my enemy he will trouble me no more."

"But who are you?" cried Ruth, her blood running cold at hearing the circumstances of the crime so minutely described.

The woman gave a low cry. "I will not tell--I will not tell!" she said, in a fierce voice, quite at variance with that in which she usually spoke. "I am safe after all these years! I am--you--will never----" Her voice died away in a drawl, and she became silent.

"Tell me more--more!" cried Ruth, springing towards her. But Mrs. Garvey made no reply. The influence of the spirit, of the piece of gold, or whatever else it was that moved her, had passed, and she was in what appeared to be a heavy sleep.

Seeing that nothing further was to be got out of her for the moment, Ruth obeyed the instructions which she had received beforehand, and drawing up the green blind, opened the window. The light and the keen air pouring into the room seemed to dispel Mrs. Garvey's drowsiness. She stirred, moved her arms, and woke with a yawn to find Miss Cass bending over her. Of all that had passed she was evidently quite oblivious; she even seemed surprised at the sight of her visitor's scared face.

"My dear," she said at last, "I hope I have not been telling you anything very terrible!"

"Don't you know what you have said?"

"No. Something speaks through me; I am only the vehicle. I remember nothing when I come out of my trances."

"Do you know anything about the Turnpike House murder?"

Mrs. Garvey started. "Ah! it was about that crime you have been asking me--the Jenner tragedy? I know--the man was murdered by his wife. And what has this piece of gold got to do with it?"

"It belonged to the murderer," Ruth said with a shudder. "It seemed to me that you spoke in the person of the murderer. You described the room, its appearance at the time of the crime--the dead body, and a child holding a knife, and looking on. Then you said you were in darkness, that you would never be found out, and--oh! you said a lot of strange things--that the child had a knife in his hand, and that he was standing over the body," faltered Ruth, thinking she was about to hear that Neil had killed his father.

Mrs. Garvey shook her head. "It was not the child," she said, decidedly; "he would not have had those links about him. The man who killed his father wore them, else I could not have told you what I did. Where did you find this piece of gold?"

"Under the window of the room in which the crime was committed. What you say fits in with my own belief that the blow was struck through the window. You can't remember who you were--in the trance, I mean?"

"No," said the woman gently; "I remember nothing. Find the man to whom the link belongs. I can give no further or better advice than that."

"That is easier said than done," protested the girl. "How am I to find the man?"

Mrs. Garvey shook her head. She could give no more information, and she said so. Moreover, she was exhausted after the effort she had made, seeing which Ruth took her broken link and returned home more perplexed than ever; that being the usual frame of mind of those who dabble in the supernatural. Yet she fully believed what the clairvoyant had told her; Mrs. Garvey could not possibly have known of the scene in that bare room immediately after the crime had been committed. Mrs. Jenner alone could have described it; and she had told it only to Geoffrey Heron.

Although Miss Cass's thoughts were much taken up with the case, she saw no way of prosecuting further inquiries. The toy horse in the hands of the clairvoyant might perhaps have helped her; but, truth to tell, she had forgotten all about it! Meanwhile she wrote to Geoffrey and related what had happened. With regard to the clairvoyant, she quite expected that the hard-headed young man would scoff at her; but, much, to her surprise, he did not. In place of a letter, the young squire himself appeared, with full permission from Neil to tell Ruth the reason why his mother had held her peace. He did not stay at Hollyoaks, but drove over from his own place.

Mrs. Chisel received him with effusion, and worried him with questions about himself; and all the time, for reasons of his own connected with love and business, he was dying to be alone with Miss Cass. At length, however, Mrs. Chisel, putting it in her own graceful way, thought it would only be fair to give poor Ruth her chance of pushing her conquest; so she left the winter garden on the plea that her dear children required their mother's eye; and Geoffrey Heron proceeded at once to the business which had brought him.

"I am beginning to think something of your clairvoyant after all," he said. "What you wrote to me about Mrs. Garvey's description of the scene must be wonderfully accurate; yes, even to the child with the knife in his hand. That child was Neil; and it was because his mother found him standing thus that she has undergone all this punishment without speaking a word in her own defence."

"Gracious!" was Ruth's not very original exclamation. "Did she believe that he had killed his father? How terrible!"

"Very terrible!" said Heron, gravely. "Now you can understand how it was that Webster was taken ill. For his mother had told him that she believed him to have killed his father; then she forbade him to re-open the case. She was perfectly willing to remain where she was so long as he was safe and free."

"Oh, she is a noble woman!" cried Ruth. "But it was not Neil who either consciously or unconsciously committed the crime; Mrs. Garvey says he did not. But who it was she cannot tell. One moment, Geoffrey, and I will tell you all more explicitly than I could do by letter." And she proceeded to relate the whole story from beginning to end.

"Well, we are as far from the truth as ever," Geoffrey said, when she had finished. "I think the next step is to shew that broken link to Mrs. Jenner. She may be able to remember someone who used to wear such an ornament."

Ruth took the link out of her purse and gave it to him. "But you will send it back again when you have done with it?" she said. "I want to keep it."

"As a memento of this horrible affair?" he asked, with a smile. "You are like the man who had a book bound in a human skin. I do not care for such things myself; but you shall have it back with a full report of what Mrs. Jenner says. And now, dear, I think we may talk a little about ourselves. After all, this case is not the whole of life to us."

And they did talk about themselves. Among other things, she told him of her encounter with Job, the Sapengro, and his astonishment when she had spoken to him in the Romany tongue. "How on earth did you learn it?" he asked, amazed.

"Oh, when I was at school, and after I left, too, I was fond of reading Lavengro."

Then they dropped the subject, and were busy talking of themselves and their prospects when Mrs. Chisel glided into the room; and Geoffrey found that he had an important engagement at the nearest town, and took his leave. For the society of the elder sister was more than he could endure. They both went to see him off, and at the door a few whispered words passed between him and Ruth. Mrs. Chisel was immediately on the alert.

"What did he say to you?" she asked as soon as he was out of earshot.

"He made me an offer of marriage, which, of course, I refused," Ruth said, flippantly, and then darted off to seek safety in her own room before the offended matron could empty upon her the vials of her wrath.

On her way up she was stopped by Mildred Chisel, who held up a new doll for inspection. "I call her Jane," said the small child, in a confidential whisper. "She is new, but her clothes are old. See, Aunt Ruth, she has all the dresses and brooches of old Peggy."

Ruth looked carelessly at the doll. Then her eyes were suddenly caught by an ornament which served, in Mildred's eyes, for a brooch. It was a gold oval, enamelled with a horse, and it was the double--in all but the device--of the link which she had found. "Where did you get that?" she asked, faintly.

"Oh, grandpapa gave me that brooch!" replied the child.